No More Sarri - Premier League 2019/20

[blameless]

The IFAB could actually do something useful the next time they tweak the rules - if it looks like you're playing a completely different sport (rugby tackle of any kind, ice-hockey-style bodychecking, NFL-style horse-collar tackle) then it's a straight red regardless of whether play's near one of the goals or not.

[Snake Plissken]

That sort of tactical fouling high up the pitch is becoming much more prevalent, so the IFAB ought to be having a look at it.

[delicatemoth]

Cynical fouls get yellows, not reds.

Ah, that's why Choudhury got a yellow against Liverpool. I guess they want to take intent out of the equation like with handball, on the basis that it's hard to judge and it wouldn't be fair to give a red for an accidental foul of that nature? That's a fair point, but I'd have been quite happy to see Choudhury (and, I'm guessing, this Arsenal player I didn't see) sent off because I don't like fouls like that, I want him to cut it out of his game. It's not "taking one for the team", it's violent and dangerous play.

[seand]

Choudhury's was violent conduct IMO- he made no attempt to play the ball and endangered Salah

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I had to root around to find a clip of it.

That's so far outside the rules as to what constitutes an acceptable tackle that it's a red card. He's just a flailing flying mess of limbs at that point. Clear free kick to leicester though.

[Snake Plissken]

Burnley have to be the example for Norwich, and for a load of other clubs around England. what they've done is pretty extraordinary, and they have very little in the way of natural advantages. Burnley got promoted in 2014-15, didn't really sign anyone much , their wage bill barely rose, So they made a profit of £30 million, paid off all their debt, sold Ings, Trippier and shackell, bought another few players from the championship, and only lost £4 million in their season in the second tier, because of promotion bonuses, which is as good a reason as any for a club to lose money. in 2016-17, they made a profit of £22 million, then the next season they finished seventh, and made a profit of £36 million. You'd have to assume that they have made a decent whack last year as well. Aside from spending £15 million on ben gibson, they don't seem to have really put a foot wrong. It helps to have a serious manager.

It is however time for him to show us something new, or else they run the risk of stagnating a bit. This whole Dwight mcNeil experiment seems to be working out well, Perhaps the time has come to start buying some younger players with more potential, to go with the steady stream of seasoned professionals from the championship, (that michael Keane deal worked out quite well for them) and give a few more young players like mcNeil a go. The difference between a youth team player who drifts off down through the leagues, and a first team player is often as little as 5 or 10 games. The thing is that They've done up the training ground. There's a limited need for ground Expansion, so what are you going to use the money for? The best use for the money is to act as insurance to cover relegation for a couple of years, if this transformation doesn't quite work out in the short term. But it seems like the sort of thing that seems more likely to work out than the reverse.

Just to pick up on a couple of things.

Shackell was tapped up by Derby and downed tools after receiving an offer which doubled his wages. Ings was out of contract. Trippier had his buyout clause met.

Andre Gray was the previous summers Michael Keane. James Tarkowski was supposed to be this summers Gray, and I was amazed when no-one came in for him - with Gibson as the pre-made replacement. (Matej Vydra is the £15m misstep, but then forcing his way past Wood and Barnes last season was difficult.) Next on the production line is Charlie Taylor, but annoyingly Dyche seems to prefer Erik Pieters in the left back position.

Not all the money is sitting in the bank - the wage bill is somewhere north of £82m now, though that might include the bonuses paid out for qualifying for Europe. Considering TV income is ~£100m, that is still dangerously high. Compared to some, Burnley have a high buy to sell ratio - quite a few players leave on frees at the end of contracts. Jeff Hendrick will probably be the next at the end of this year.

Someone comes in with £50m for Dwight McNeil, then we will sell. Looking at the squad, there aren't lot of players you would expect to sell for more than we paid. Gudmundsson (£2m), Pope (£1m)... that's about it.

It's nice to be considered a model for other clubs to follow but the way the PL is operated makes it impossible not to be sucked into the madness of paying over the odds on wages.

[Antepli Ejderha]

See Swansea. We were run well and then started to compete on wages and ended up with frees I'm ridiculous salaries, e.g. Gomis and Andre Ayew. Then we bought back players on ridiculous salaries or brought in loans on ridiculous fees.
We have then had to sell our younger players to balance the books and are only probably now close to being debt free, the next three windows should see that happen.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Burnley's contracts are apparently very performance related. Finishing seventh and the associated extra win bonuses would have been one part of it. Qualifying for Europe would have been another. But they renewed a few contracts, and signed a few players. Even then the wage to turnover ratio is still below 60%. Turnover fell a bit last season though, and it will be interesting to see what happened to their wage bill. If they can keep their wage bill below 60%, they will be fine. It will be interesting to see last season's figures.

I think that perhaps the thing that strikes me about watching burnley play, is that there is a bit more football in the players, than they are getting out of them. They have the hard and important stuff pretty well nailed down, in terms of positional discipline, and defensive organization. The next step is to work on attacking in a systematic structured way. I can think of a number of Spanish clubs over the years that kind of fit the bill. Villareal back in the day, Malaga under pellegrini, Atletico madrid after a fashion. At international level Iceland would be a good example. Switching to a more possession based game shouldn't be that tricky, the players are already standing in more or less the right positions. I think that perhaps 2017-18 is the high point for playing the way that they do, and they're more at risk of facing diminishing returns than anything else. Football is changing very fast. this generation of players coming through is technically and tactically well in advance of players now in their mid twenties. They may as well try and take advantage of this wave.

There has to be some sort of medium term plan, and while burnley isn't exactly the most exotic destination or the most glamorous club, they do have two things that should make them attractive to young players. The first is that they are a very stable club, and the second is that they favour a set way of playing, so basically someone is telling them what to do, so they can go out and do it. If they can establish a reputation for giving younger players a chance, and as a place where you will get a solid football education along with getting the chance to play, then they can move on a bit. That whole Steve Stone business is a bit worrying though. That sort of thing is never good.

AE, the problem swansea had was that they kept changing managers and with every new manager there was a slight change in direction, a bit of pointless signing of players, and then the club kind of lost its way. It's the trap that clubs that change their manager too often can fall into, while clubs that keep their manager have to watch out for a bit of creeping staleness. (i.e. Spurs)

[hobbes]

So Villa have had one allowed that was offside and Liverpool have had one disallowed that wasn’t. Both VAR checked by...

...Martin Atkinson.

[hobbes]

Mane gets his foot stamped on in the area. Gets a yellow for diving.
card upheld on VAR.

[hobbes]

Justice served. Two (very) late goals for the reds. Phew!

[Arturo]

Another atrocious display from Norwich today. No shots on target and a game we never looked like getting anything from. We haven't scored an away goal since our opening match at Anfield.

Watford at home next. Nothing but three points will do.

[Jah Womble]

God, I can’t stand Chelsea.

But I have to concede that they’re pretty good at the moment.

Justice served. Two (very) late goals for the reds. Phew!

That kind of victory looks the mark of a title-winning side, IMO. (And probably the ‘O’ of quite a few folk...)

[Patrick Thistle]

IMO too

[hobbes]

I won’t believe it until it’s a mathematical certainty. Liverpool have blown it too often and City are too good/expensive to let Liverpool win.

[Patrick Thistle]

Ooh Ben Foster almost scored today. Nice of him to congratulate Kepa for keeping it out.

[Patrick Thistle]

Too early to predict Norwich and Watford to go down?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

That Man utd game today was an object lesson (as much as the other games) that Man utd are still at a stage where they need to get the bounce of the ball. They got it against chelsea, They got it against Norwich, but they didn't really get it today. instead you got people rather tentatively trying to play passing football on a pitch that they were brushing water off at the start, and the whole thing descended into rather chaotic pinball. United needed to either score one of those low probability shots at the beginning or get that penalty. You can't actually do what Lerma did, Though that hasn't been enough in other games this season. Either way it was a great goal by King. Wan bissaka thought he could get the ball, but didn't realize that king was going to do an homage to Pele in the 1958 world cup final. It wasn't even greenwood's day at the end.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Ooh Ben Foster almost scored today. Nice of him to congratulate Kepa for keeping it out.

Foster's always struck me as being one of the really nice guys in the PL.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I don't think goalkeepers are big fans of goalkeepers scoring goals in general, even when it's them. They showed Begovic scoring a goal against Artur Boruc, and he barely celebrated, knowing that that freak gust of wind could just as easily have happened to him. I mean obviously there's people like Rogerio Ceni, or chilavert or Hans Jorg Butt, but taking set pieces is probably a bit different.

[ursus arctos]

This is true and is why ice hockey goalies feel that they can celebrate more effusively after scoring on an empty net, as opposed to lucking out with a ridiculous bounce or deflection.

[Arturo]

Too early to predict Norwich and Watford to go down?

Yes, but a real possibility for us. Our defeats haven't even been close, and the scorelines have flattered us rather than the opposition. God help us if Watford win at Carrow Road next Friday (and what has gone so badly wrong at Vicarage Road this time around?)

It's fair to say that the few summer signings we made haven't made a breakthrough. Patrick Roberts looks like being yet another loan signing from one of the perennial top six (in this case Man City) who will go back to his parent club without making an impact.

File under David Bentley, Marcus Edwards, Andre Wisdom, Patrick Bamford, etc...

[Satchmo Distel]

It looks like Arsenal, Man U and Spurs already only have 4th to aim for given Chelsea's form. Hopefully Leicester will hold on. Spurs probably need to finish 3rd in their CL group then win the Europa to make the CL next season.

Would love Everton and/or Newcastle to go down but suspect they'll buy just enough journeymen in the transfer window to scrape by. Current bottom 3 likely to stay that way.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I'm getting worried that Liverpool might be using up their Luckybastardberbaslugometer points too early this season. Last year, to get to 97 points, we had 3 comedy keeper moments, 1 injury time goal out of nowhere, 1 late missed pen against us and 1 dubious late penalty for. 8 games in and we've already used up the dubious late pen and 1 of our comedy keeper cards. We need to be saving those for cold nights away in February.

Well, that makes it 1 comedy keeper, the dubious late pen and 1 injury time goal so far. Plus a late equaliser that never looked like coming. 7 points and a lead of ...6.

[Satchmo Distel]

Man City must have had some free points as well, though.